MILWAUKEE Motorcycle company slated to be sold off by next month

Indian Motorcycle Co. bikes have become collectors' items.
MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
MILWAUKEE -- The sale or liquidation of a motorcycle company that was once a rival of Harley-Davidson could come by mid-January, according to a letter mailed this week to Indian Motorcycle Co. dealerships.
If a "bulk sale" of Indian is not settled soon, the company will be sold "piecemeal" in a Jan. 21 auction, according to the letter from a company hired to find a buyer for Indian.
In September, Indian closed the Gilroy, Calif., factory where it made Chief, Scout and Spirit motorcycles. It hired CMA Business Credit Services of San Leandro, Calif., to find a buyer for the company.
Selling Indian has been "more difficult and time-consuming than we had anticipated," CMA said in a Dec. 23 letter to motorcycle dealers.
CMA said it continues "to work with several interested parties to acquire all of the assets of the company with the intention of restarting the business." Should the efforts fail, a Jan. 21 auction has been scheduled in Gilroy to sell Indian's assets in pieces.
Brand history
The original maker of Indian motorcycles went out of business in the early 1950s, and its bikes -- with Indian-head logos -- became collectors' items.
The brand was resurrected four years ago by a group of private investors. They sought to capture as much as 5 percent of the U.S. market for large cruiser motorcycles by 2005, hoping to sell as many as 14,000 bikes a year.
By comparison, Harley-Davidson sells almost 300,000 motorcycles a year and has more than half of the U.S. market for cruiser models.